Hot on the heels of Apple's announcement that you can now kick the stock iOS keyboard to the curb and choose your own third-party keyboard, fan-favorite Android keyboard SwiftKey said it's already hard at work on an iOS version. The company isn't ready to say when you'll be able to get your hands on it, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was available when the next iPhone comes out sometime later this year.

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In an email to CNET, SwiftKey's founders Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock said:

"We're delighted Apple has decided to embrace the importance of opening its platform to third party keyboards. For more than four years, SwiftKey has pioneered faster, easier typing on touchscreens, leading the industry with next-word prediction and smarter autocorrection. Our technology features on more than 200 million devices to date and we can't wait to reach more. We first brought a taste of our technology to iOS in January this year with the launch of the free note-taking app SwiftKey Note. Are we going to build SwiftKey Keyboard for iOS 8? Of course we are. We've already started."

SwiftKey has made a name for itself in the Android community as a powerful predictive keyboard that learns your typing style and suggests words it thinks you want to type next. You can also use swiping gestures to type by moving your finger around on the screen, connecting letters to form words. All of that same technology will likely come to iOS when SwiftKey releases its app.

The company already has an iOS presence with SwiftKey Note, a note-taking app that syncs with Evernote and uses predictive typing. That app came out in January 2014.

Apple also brought its own onscreen iOS keyboard up-to-date today by announcing that you can use predictive word suggestions to type out messages -- something that SwiftKey has done for years. Time will tell if Apple's revamped keyboard will be a win with users, or if people will shun it in favor of a third-party option.

About the author

Sarah Mitroff is a CNET associate editor who reviews Android software and mobile hardware. In the past, she's also written about consumer tech, startups, and business news for Wired, MacWorld, PCWorld, and VentureBeat.
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